I wasn't keeping track of dates of peaks climbed when i did this. But i do remember how cool it was. I had lived in seattle and was on vacation with a friend that had never been to the Northwest. We arrived at night from Idaho so they were pretty shocked by all the vegetation. Particularly how big the ferns get and how dizzying it can be looking straight up in the middle of all the trees...

For anyone living in Seattle, Mt. Si is a close, beautiful hike, and effective for training too. Have gone both light and heavy, in winter and summer. First time remember tons of snow and the Gray Jays on top. My second time, I topped the haystack in poor weather. From the top, a seasoned mountaineer pointed out the different peaks of the Eastern Front of the Olympics, singling out The Brothers, and my future became clear. Notably, saw a family of short-tailed weasels running among the summit rocks in the summer.

Busy, crowded hike up to the plateau area. Everyone, it seems, stays there, while few continue to the true summit. Reaching the base of the Haystack, DB and I headed straight up the steepish (class 4-5) terrain left of the standard scrambling route. Good exposure and a nice summit.

We got a late start and debated ascending the haystack, but did it anyway knowing we would be hiking back in the dark. Despite some haze, we could see Seattle, Bellevue, Snoqualmie Valley, Mount Rainier, and many other mountains. Our cell phones made surprisingly good flashlights over the last half mile of trail in the dark.

Yeah! this is a cool little mountain. The hike up through the forest was wonderful with a few tremendous old growth trees around. I loved the Haystack Scramble! There were only marginal views because of clouds. Shooting for Glacier peak tomorrow!

Caught a nice weather window, amidts one of the crappiest winter/spring's ever. Loved the Haystack scramble (sounds like a item on a Denny's menu, mmmm), and will likely be back to do this a few more times before the snow finally melts out from the more interesting summits.

I just hiked it yesterday and it was hard for me once we got past the 3rd mile marker because after the extremely steep part, the incline keeps going. I'm not use to that kind of steady incline, so it was rather difficult for me but I kept going. Totally worth it when we got to the top. Everybody seems to be complaining that there were too many people on this one. We did it on a weekday and we only passed maybe 10 people at the most, as well as a small field trip group of kids. Other than that, it was quiet. Despite the occasional cloud cover, the view was nice and I had a couple of gray jays eat out of my hand. The incline up makes it a lot easier to go down and it takes half the time to get down as it does to get up. Some snow cover up and mud and slush on the way down as it melted. The only irritating part was the constant slush and water drops falling from the trees. It often felt like somebody was hitting me with snowballs. My hair was soaked by the time we were less than halfway up to the top. Didn't do the haystack, I don't have enough experience with rock scrambling and I was too tired.

Spring hike up to get in shape for the climbing season. The trails have been cleared of all blow downs but there is still hard-packed snow at about 2700 feet to the top. Lots of melting ice/hard snow on the haystack. We were glad to have ice axes to chop steps, but didn't need crampons.